EARLY HISTORY OF MALTA

This section of our website is to offer the visitor highlights of the Maltese Islands. We would like to make your visit to Malta as welcoming as possible and enjoy with us the rich Maltese Heritage.

This section is being prepared by Vinessa Falzon
(Student and member of the Word of Life PH Church)

All the various periods of Malta’s history make fascinating reading, but there are two particular periods- the Neolithic period and the period of the Knights of St.John. Research, however, has shown that the earliest Neolithic temples on Malta are about 1000 years older than the famous pyramids of Giza. Huge rocks, several tons in weight, were used in the construction of these temples. Even with modern techniques and tools this would not be an easy task today. How these enormous loads were moved, or even lifted, between 5000 and 6000 years ago, still remains a mystery.

The earliest temples, such as the one at Ggantija in Gozo, were built by piling huge rocks on top of each other. They did not have any carvings or decorations. Later temples, such as the one at Hagar Qim, in Malta, were made of huge stones fitting very closely together and ornately decorated. Carving was done only with very primitive flint and obsidian tools. No archeological remains made of metal from this period have been discovered on Malta.

The subterranean burial place at Malta’s Hal Saflieni, the so called Hypogeum, is an even more astonishing relic and its accidental discovery in 1902 caused quite a sensation in world archeological circles. The temple must have been literally carved into the rocks over hundreds of years with simple tools made from flint and obsidian. Starting at ground level the hypogeum descends several stories below ground and covers an area of more than 500 square meters. The Hypogeum was certainly a place of worship and burial- the bones of over 7000 people have been found- and could also have been used as a place for the training of priestesses. A number of relics support this hypothesis.

All traces of the mysterious people who built the hypogeum disappeared suddenly around 2000 B.C- at the height of their culture. It remains pure speculation as to whether conquerors with the modern metal weapons wiped out this unarmed, unfortified people or whether a sudden epidemic destroyed all human life on Malta for centuries. Equally strange and mysterious are the cart ruts found on many of the rocky rides in Malta. The most popular theory is that these were made by primitive slide-carts used before the invention of the wheel.  

 Ghar Dalam is 144m long natural cave located about 500m from St.George’s Bay, Birzebbugia. The cave is renowned for the remains of the characteristic dwarf stalactites and stalagmites, which it contains which reveal its very great antiquity.

Hypogeum used in about 2400 B.C. This is an ancient underground burial groan- 12 meters blow street level situated in Paola. It consists of a system of caves, passages and cubicles cut in the rocks at times resembling the interior of a megalithic temple.

Ghar Hasan is to be found at the south of the island, near Hal far. It is a huge cave with a large window in the cliff- facing rising perpendicularly out of the water.

St.Agatha and St.Paul’s catacombs are typical of the underground Christian cemeteries, which were common in the 4^th century A.D.

Cart ruts, these are mostly found on the exposed surface of outcrops of the harder coralline limestone. The most widely excepted dating for our ancient cart ruts is the Bronze Age, roughly between 1500 and 700 B.C. Some archeologists tend to believe that they were intended for the transport of heavy blocks of stone from the quarry face. Hagar Qim is unique among the Maltese temples as globigerina limestone is used throughout its construction there are complicated decorations carved on some of the stones, an oracular chamber and altars. Mnajdra temple is better preserved in Hagar Qim and is a short walk down from the Hagar Qim site.